Our Shared Vision for Philanthropy Today
Stay Strong in the Face of Pressure
Grantmakers foster growth or impede it. Strength in this moment means holding steady in the face of pressure to retreat or conform.
Fund like a Healthy Planet Requires a Healthy Democracy
Every issue requires the planet’s well-being. Environmental philanthropy is inherently social and political; as a result, grantmakers must invest with awareness of the systems that sustain both people and planet.
All philanthropy is environmental philanthropy because we live on planet earth and invest it or divest it.
Philanthropy is Global, Even if You’re Working from Home
Fascism and authoritarianism’s goal is to isolate us and wield our power. The only way to get our power back is to reinforce our local practice and global commitment to funding people and planet.
Demonstrate Sharing Power is Possible
Starting today, philanthropy must develop generational plans to share power.
Fund Infrastructure to Sustain Change
Transformation requires steady, often invisible work. Philanthropy must train itself to fund operations, administration, and life-cycle change to hold movements together.
Grantmakers should provide flexible funding that adequately acknowledges, strengthens, and supports long-term transformational change.
Live the Role of Risk-Taker
Philanthropy’s job is not to preserve its existence but to move money and power toward experimentation, learning, and collective action even in the face of failure. Taking risk is an act of solidarity, a commitment to use privilege, resources, and imagination to help build a world where well-being is shared.
Grantmakers are called to embody the private sector’s tenacity for change while also advancing the public sector’s commitment to building shared value.
Do More, Together
No successful grantmaker acts alone. Partnership with communities, movements and across sectors is both a smart strategy and a responsibility. Philanthropy’s best work depends on collaboration that replaces competition with shared purpose.
Our Shared Vision for the Future of Philanthropy
Belong Fully to the Movement
Philanthropy’s strength lies in its willingness to stand shoulder to shoulder with people taking risks and making change. Grantmakers participate in movements rather than observing them from afar and “build the good and fight the bad” by leaning in and quickly adapting.
Practice Accountability
Philanthropy operates as a community to support the group project of surviving. A thriving community creates and reinforces accountability to sustain relationships. Impactful philanthropy supports transparency, shared learning, and mutual responsibility among peers and partners for purpose.
Peak Philanthropy Operates Across Borders and Boundaries
Communities everywhere hold lessons about justice, joy, and innovation. Philanthropy invests in the local experience as part of a global system, connecting efforts across movements, geographies, contexts, and disciplines. Collaboration across boundaries— cultural, sectoral, and political—is not optional; it is how relevance and impact are sustained.
Act in Real Time
The world is changing faster than philanthropy is. Grantmakers think about and plan portfolios generationally, questioning their structures, missions, and practices with the understanding that new systems and structures will be built.
Stand Firm for Dignity
Philanthropy stands firm to resist regression and reject neutrality because it’s right. Steadfast conviction means refusing to settle for incremental change when lives and ecosystems are at stake.
Appropriately Assess Risk
Philanthropy’s greatest risk lies in prioritizing preservation over transformation. Philanthropy recognizes that losing money is less costly than losing people and progress. Change requires grantmakers to take bold positions and act even when the path forward is uncertain.
Fund for Generational Change
Philanthropy chooses to avoid competition by funding systematically. Grantmakers move money to broaden and reinforce success with more capital for more experiments, operations, and infrastructure.
Our Internal Work
Honor What’s Ending to Make Space for What’s Next
Change begins with change. Grantmakers must grieve the loss of previous ways of working to allow new generations to shape the future in their own context and language. Letting go isn’t failure; it’s stewardship of evolution and renewal.
Recall That Numbers Represent Lives
Impact should not only be measured through data points or carbon. Behind every metric are people, ecosystems, and futures. Measurement is meaningful when it is rooted in relationships and reflects harmony between action and impact.
Give Freely
Giving is rooted in the belief that what we release will take root elsewhere. To give is to trust—in people, in purpose, and in possibility. Philanthropy should move resources in alignment with their missions, seeing spend-down and redistribution not as loss, but as acts of flow and repair.
Make Accountability a Shared Practice
Accountability is the beginning of trust, not a threat to it. Philanthropy should rigorously embrace self-examination and open dialogue, asking hard questions to let go of old patterns and practices and invite shared responsibility for action and learning.
Move More Money
Philanthropy has the unique capacity to both attract and mobilize resources at scale. Its role is not only to give but to draw in additional capital, relationships, and imagination to expand what’s possible. To multiply its impact, philanthropy must use its influence to unlock new flows of funding and align others toward shared outcomes.
Calling In Our People in Philanthropy
Trustees: Lead with Duty and Equity
Trustees owe a duty of care to the organizations they serve. Stewardship includes not only managing financial health but also knowing and sharing the enduring value of race equity as central to philanthropy’s economic, innovative, and social purpose.
Executive Leaders: Drive Change and Stay Accountable
Executive leaders must relentlessly move trustees and their organizations toward bold, systemic change. Leadership means holding oneself accountable to the communities most affected by their decisions and measuring success by the progress of those they serve.
Program Officers: Bridge the Past and the Possible
Those who work between program investment and divestment decisions hold the power to connect inherited wealth with future solutions. Their charge is to resource transformation, especially when it requires dismantling “business as usual” and resourcing systems for shared prosperity.
Decision Makers: Get Close to the Work
Authority carries the responsibility to stay proximate to the problems philanthropy seeks to solve. When barriers or inequities appear, the work is clear—see them, name them, act on them.
Advisors: Trade in the Truth
An advisor’s stock-in-trade is influence. Even without formal authority, advisors have the duty to challenge norms, raise hard truths, and take the risk to make creative paths for change.
Grantmakers: Collaborate Because the Work Depends on It
Grantmaking is an act of co-creation. Grantmakers are catalysts in a shared project for change. Progress in philanthropy depends on working together, aligning resources, and amplifying collective impact.
Legal Counsel: Enable the Future
Legal counsel plays a pivotal role in shaping how philanthropy assesses risk. Grantmakers have a responsibility to check to see if their counsel holds their values. Legal counsel should affirm and safeguard institutions and advance grantmaker’s ability to act boldly, ethically, and in alignment with the public good. Counsel must help foundations interpret regulations in ways that expand access, equity, and impact, guiding boards and executives toward practices that honor both compliance and conscience. Supporting the best future practices in philanthropy means advising not only on what is permitted, but also on what is possible.